The necessity for CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and one-to-one marketing has recently received a great deal of attention due to factors such as shortening of the product life as varieties of products are produced, and customer's orientation to customized services as the use of the Internet spreads. These methods are very effective for raising the customer satisfaction, winning new customers, and keeping customers.
One-to-one marketing is a kind of database marketing which creates a database of personal attribute information including the age, gender, hobby, preference, and purchase log of a customer, analyzes the contents of the database, and makes a proposal complying with customer's needs. A typical concrete method of this marketing is variable printing. These days, a variable print system which customizes a document for each customer and outputs it has been developed along with the development of the DTP (Desk Top Publishing) technique and the proliferation of digital printing apparatuses. The variable print system needs to create a customized document in which contents of a different amount for each customer are optimally laid out. For example, the template of a customized document for variable printing can be created by a form creation application as disclosed in patent reference 1 (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-222493).
Generally, when such a customized document is to be created by the variable print system, containers are laid out in a document. The container is a drawing area for drawing contents (drawing contents), and is also called a field area. More specifically, a customized document is created by laying out containers in a document and associating a database with the layout (associating contents in the database with the containers). In this specification, such a document is called a variable data document (or simply called a template).
In the variable print system, each laid-out container can receive contents which change for each customer. If the size of data to be inserted into a container is flexible but the container size is fixed, the following problem arises. For example, when text data of a size larger than the container size is inserted, all the text cannot be displayed within the container. When image data of a size larger than the container size is inserted, part of the image is lost. This problem is called overflow.
For example, when contents are image data, the image may be reduced and drawn in the container, but the image may become excessively small. When text data which cannot be fully fitted in a fixed-size container is inserted, the font size of the text may be reduced to display all the text in the container. However, adjustment of the font size may excessively decrease the font size, disturb the balance of the whole document, and make it difficult to read the text.
To solve the above-described problems, there is proposed a technique of flexibly setting text and image layout areas in a document editing application. This technique can flexibly set text and image layout areas. Some document editing applications can make the size of a layout area flexible and increase it in accordance with the data amount input from a keyboard. There is also proposed a technique of, when text data which exceeds a fixed size is inserted, reducing the font size of the text and displaying all the text within the container.
When, however, the flexible container size increases, the container overlaps another container in the same document. In adjusting the font size to display all the text within a container, the font size becomes excessively small when the amount of text to be displayed is large.
As a technique which solves these problems, a technique associated with a layout design apparatus is known. According to this technique, when the size of a given container increases, the size of an adjacent container is reduced to keep a given interval between them (see, e.g., patent reference 2 (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 7-129658 (paragraph 0049, FIG. 8)).
To hide the contents of some containers for security or the like, a technique of displaying the containers by masking is required. As this technique, a document management system is known which masks a document made up of a plurality of papers (see, e.g., patent reference 3 (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-101169 (paragraph 0053, FIG. 15)).
However, in patent reference 1 described above, the container size is fixed, and overflow or a free space area occurs. Patent reference 2 is related to a document editing application which simply enlarges a layout area during editing, and highly likely to disturb the layout balance. The document editing application cannot cope with variable printing of extracting data in a data field from a database for each record and inserting (merging) the data. In patent reference 3, masking can be done for only a designated document which is registered in advance as a final output target. No masking can be performed for an output product whose layout is changed for each output target (record), like variable printing. That is, in a variable printing environment where the layout dynamically changes, masking suitable for the layout cannot be implemented, which is inconvenient for the user.